Dream On (Dare to Dream Book 2), page 32
Seamus started to chuckle, then looked her in the eyes and his expression changed to confusion, then utter disbelief. Kris’s heart thumped so heavily inside her chest that it was painful as she waited for him to work out what she had just told him.
“Wait…you’re not …”
Slowly, Kris forced herself to nod as his eyes flickered from her face to her hands and back again.
“How long have you known?”
She swallowed around the dryness in her mouth. “Since the day before you left.”
Seamus stared at her in horror. “And you didn’t think you should tell me?”
“I was going to, but it didn’t seem like the best time. For either of us.”
“Jesus, Kris. What must you think of me? What must your sisters think?”
She shook her head. “They don’t know.”
Seamus gave her a bewildered look. “They don’t… Sweetheart, why do you do this to yourself? Why do you insist on fighting your battles all alone?”
She felt her face flush as he walked over to her, knelt down and laid his hands over hers, squeezing them gently.
“You should’ve told me. I would’ve come back so much sooner. I’ve been over there for weeks, wishing I could come home and see you but sure you’d be thinking yourself well rid of me. And all that time you’ve been…” There was a tremor in his voice that she’d never heard before, and she felt his hands shake atop hers. “All I can do is try to do better from now on. And that starts right here with you. So you tell me what you want me to do. If you want me here, I’ll stay. I’ll glue myself to your side if that’s what you want. If you don’t…”
“I want you to stay,” she told him. “But only if you want to, not because you think you have to…”
Her voice trailed off as he pulled her hands to his lips and kissed them. “I have never, from the moment I first met you, wanted to be anywhere other than where you are. You don’t have to marry me if you don’t fancy it, I don’t care. But I love you, and I’ll always be here for you, for as long as you want me around, and probably long after you’re sick to death of the sight of me. You don’t have to be alone. You don’t have to fight all your battles by yourself. Not if you don’t want to. Not anymore.”
Kris smiled as relieved tears started to trickle down her cheeks. “Promise?”
He kissed her lips this time.
“Cross my heart.”
CHAPTER 19
“Sit up straight, Marley. Bend her. Use your inside leg, it’s not there for decoration.”
Van’s arm wouldn’t stop itching under her cast, and it was making her irritable. She wanted so badly to hack it off, but was under threat from her doctor that he would never treat her again if she did. He was an old family friend, so she’d reluctantly agreed, and to hold her to her promise, Kris had written DON’T YOU DARE in capital letters across the blue cast.
Van rested her weight on the jump pole and folded her arms across her chest, focusing her attention on Marley as she rode.
“Canter on.”
Marley moved her outside leg back a couple of inches and pressed it against Covergirl’s side. The mare leapt forward into an ebullient canter for three strides, then took sudden fright at a shadow on the ground and leapt dramatically sideways. Digging her knees into the saddle, Marley kept her seat on the fractious mare, but Covergirl’s cavorting unbalanced her, and she couldn’t help catching her in the mouth. Covergirl objected violently to the abrupt pressure on the bit and slammed to a halt, her ears laid back against her muscular neck.
Van stood in the middle of the arena with her arms crossed, looking as annoyed as her horse. It had seemed like a good idea at the time for Marley to take over the ride on Covergirl, but this was their third ride together, and instead of clicking, they were getting worse.
“For crying out loud Marley, soften your hand! She’ll dump you in the dirt if you do that again, and so she should, too.”
Marley shot her sister an angry look. “Like I meant to catch her in the mouth,” she replied sarcastically. “If she would just canter on like she was told to, she wouldn’t end up in a strop over nothing.”
“Don’t go blaming it on her,” Van argued. “She’ll do her job if you do yours. Now canter on and jump her down the outside line.”
Marley scowled at her sister, but she stroked Covergirl’s neck and pressed her into a canter again. The mare threw her head around, pretending to be in great agony over the supposed unsteadiness of Marley’s hands, but she allowed her rider to direct her down the line of fences, clearing each one with a kick of her heels. Marley eased her up and gave her a brief pat, but Covergirl flinched away from her touch, determined not to allow her rider any satisfaction.
“She drifted left,” Van said, likewise refusing to be satisfied with her sister’s performance. “You’ve got to keep her straighter than that, or she’ll run out on you next time.”
Marley brought Covergirl back to a raking trot, and swept past Van angrily. They had been out here for over an hour, and both horse and rider were drenched in sweat and completely fed up. Circling around her sister as Van continued to lecture her on everything she was doing wrong, Marley drew the mare to a halt and tossed the reins down on her neck. Covergirl took this as an excuse to startle violently and try to spin around, and when Marley grabbed at the reins again, she half-reared peevishly.
“No good losing your temper,” Van told her sister. “She’ll lose hers too, and she knows how to hold a grudge.”
“You’re making it pretty hard not to,” Marley snapped. “I am doing you a favour here, remember.”
“No, I’m the one doing you a favour, giving you a horse to ride next season while I’m away.”
“Did I ask you to?”
“Did you say no?” Van countered.
“I would’ve if I’d known what was good for me. If she keeps going like this, I’ll end up with a broken arm too, or worse,” Marley said sulkily.
Van scoffed. “Oh please. Maggot was ten times worse and you persevered with her.”
“Yeah, well I do stupid things sometimes.”
“Tell me about it.”
Marley shot her sister a dirty look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means exactly what you think,” Van told her, taking Covergirl by the bridle. “Do you want me to make you a list?”
Marley normally took Van’s ribbing on the chin, but she was hot and angry and spoiling for a fight. “Go on then.”
For a moment, Van debated whether or not to keep talking, but the constant itching of her arm and the building frustration at watching her horse misbehave and not being able to get on and sort her out was getting to her.
“Okay, if you insist. Number one, pretty much everything you did on New Year’s Eve.” Marley rolled her eyes as Van continued to tick things off on her fingers. “Number two, riding Maggie in secret after you’d been told not to. You’re lucky she didn’t kill you. Number three, the way you treated Jake, reeling him in and then throwing him back when you decided you’d had enough. Number four-”
But Marley didn’t let her get any further. “What happened between me and Jake is none of your business, but for the record, I didn’t just throw him back.”
“Yes you did. You freaked out because he told you he loved you and you couldn’t handle it.”
“I’m sixteen, I don’t have room for that in my life right now,” Marley argued, but Van cut her off.
“You didn’t make room. You push people away, Marley. You don’t realise it, but you do. You close yourself off to anyone and anything that doesn’t fit in your perfect little hamster ball of life. But you can’t experience love only on your own terms. It doesn’t work that way.”
“What would you know about love?” Marley fired back. “Mike loves you, and you’re just leaving him behind! You’re leaving us all, despite everything we’ve done so that you could stay. I sold Cruise for you, you know. I sold him to save this farm for you, because I stupidly thought that you’d never want to live anywhere else. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered, I should’ve just kept Cruise and let your future go to hell!”
The words poured out of her, words she didn’t even know she’d been thinking. Words she didn’t mean, but it was too late to take them back now. Van’s reciprocal anger was fierce, and she directed it at Marley in full force.
“Here you go again. Poor little Marley, her life is just so hard. Get a grip, would you? We’ve all sold horses, we’ve all made sacrifices to keep this place. Do you hear Kris complaining day after day about how hard it was to sell Normandy? Do you hear me moaning about your ponies taking up more than half of the truck all season long, shutting mine out? No. We suck it up and we carry on, because this is the hand that life has dealt us. It’s not what we wanted, it’s not what we dreamed about but it’s what we got.”
Marley frowned at her sister. “Your dreams are coming true. Kris’s dreams are coming true.”
“If you think this is what Kris has been dreaming about, you’re dumber than I thought,” Van snapped. “Why do you think I’m leaving now? Because in two years’ time you’ll turn eighteen, and Kris will no longer be legally responsible for you. She was supposed to be free then, to go and do whatever she wants. But now she’ll be stuck here, raising yet another kid, never getting to live her own life or follow her own dreams. That’s not what I wanted for her, and it’s sure as hell not what she wanted for herself.” She broke off, looking at Marley’s stunned expression, but she was too riled up to apologise. “Forget it. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Right, because I’m a dumb kid who doesn’t understand anything, right?” Marley kicked her feet free of the stirrups and flung herself to the ground. “Ride your own horse! I’m done.”
She spun around and marched away in a fury as Van ground her teeth, torn between regret at her own words and fury at Marley’s pointless tantrum.
“Marley, come back here right now!”
Marley spun on her heel, and threw the barb she knew would sting more than any other, the one that by unspoken agreement, the girls never used against one other. “You can’t tell me what to do! You’re not my mother!”
The words slammed against Van, stunning her into momentary silence. Before she could recover her wits, Marley turned away and started running. She fled through the yard, past the house, down the driveway and along the road, her feet pounding against the hard dirt. Refusing to think, she let her feet carry her on and on, away from her sister and the wounds she’d opened up.
* * *
A light autumn rain was wafting in sheets across the city, a penetrating mist that would quickly soak to the skin anyone who stepped outside without a raincoat. Walking slowly down a wide suburban street, pausing occasionally to check the house numbers before moving on, Marley shivered in the cooling air, and rubbed her goose-pimpled bare arms. Dusk was falling around her, and the streetlights cast a weird orange light across the footpath. A dog ran out at her, barking fiercely, and although she smiled and spoke to it in a friendly way, the dog was unconvinced that she didn’t mean to rob its owners blind, and followed her to the edge of its boundary fence, growling low in its throat the entire way.
Four doors down, Marley found her destination. Blinking the lingering rain from her eyes, she looked up at the building in front of her, then slowly climbed the steps to the front door. Her knees shook as she pushed the doorbell, as much from nerves as from the cold, and she shivered again as she waited, hoping that she’d remembered the address correctly. Otherwise it was going to be a huge waste of a bus fare, not to mention the taxi she’d had to catch from the station, which had cost far more than she’d thought. She had no money left to get home, and her cell phone was almost completely dead.
Why do you put yourself in these situations? she wondered, tucking a strand of wet hair behind one ear as she heard footsteps approaching from the other side of the door. It swung open to reveal a tall, immaculately-groomed woman who looked at Marley in astonishment. The woman’s eyes narrowed as she scanned her visitor from head to foot, and a deep crease appeared between her eyebrows.
“Can I help you?” Her words were polite, but her tone made it clear what she thought of Marley’s bedraggled appearance.
Marley shifted her weight onto the other foot. “Is Jake here?”
The woman looked taken aback, and she scanned Marley more closely. “I know who you are. You’re Van’s sister.”
Marley felt her jaw clench instinctively at the mention of her sister’s name. “Yes.” I know who you are too, she wanted to say. She wondered if Jake’s stepmother was aware of how much Marley knew about her, and her uneasy relationship with her stepson.
“I suppose you’d better come in,” Denise said, sounding resigned as she stepped back and held the door open wider. Marley stepped over the threshold and moved out of the way as Denise shut the door firmly behind her with a frown. “You’re soaked through.”
“I didn’t bring a jacket,” Marley explained.
“I can see that.” Denise sighed. “Wait there.”
She walked back down the hallway, her heels clipping sharply against the polished floors as Marley looked around. The house was very modern, all sharp lines and angles, its plain white walls punctuated with loud artwork of the modern, stylish type that wasn’t of anything in particular. It looked like a place out of a magazine, and although it was beautiful in its own way, it had a cold, almost industrial feel to it. It certainly didn’t feel like a home, and Marley struggled to imagine what it would be like living here, with nothing to do and nobody to talk to.
Denise returned and handed Marley a soft white towel. “Here, dry yourself off a little. I’ll tell Jacob that you’re here.”
Marley bit her lip, wondering all of a sudden what she really was doing there. What if Jake refuses to see me? What if he yells at me too, the way Van did, and tells me that I’m selfish and stupid? How could I think he’d welcome her with open arms, after the way I treated him? Abruptly, Marley changed her mind, and started backing towards the door.
“Wait, never mind, I…”
“Marley?”
She was too late. Overhearing their voices, Jake had come out of his room and now stood in the hallway, staring at her. Marley stared back nervously as he approached her slowly, the cuffs of his worn jeans scuffing the hardwood floors. To her relief, but he didn’t seem angered by the sight of her, but he looked very confused.
“What are you doing here?”
As he walked towards her, Marley realised just how much she’d missed him. She’d missed the way he walked, how he shoved his hands into his pockets when he was nervous, the way his dark hair fell into his mismatched eyes. The way a smile would flicker across his face before he committed to it, the way he looked at her as though she was the only person in the world. More than anything, she wanted to feel his arms around her, his body pressed against hers, his lips against her skin. You threw that back, she reminded herself. Threw it back in his face. It was too late now for any of that, but she hoped it wasn’t too late to apologise.
“I came here to say sorry. I’m sorry for what I said, for the way things ended between us. And I’m sorry that I let you down. I never meant to hurt you, I swear.”
Her voice wavered and she watched a range of emotions cross over Jake’s face as she spoke, moving too quickly for her to get a read on any of them. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat, then he spoke.
“Okay.” His tone was noncommittal, guarded.
Marley took a breath and continued. “I had a fight with Van today. Well, that’s nothing new, but she said some things that got me thinking. All the way here on the bus I couldn’t stop trying to figure it all out, and I think I have. Here’s the thing that you have to understand. Cruise filled gaps in me that I never knew were empty. I know that sounds crazy to you, that he’s just a pony, but he was more than that to me, and when I lost him, it was like…it was like I didn’t know how to be myself anymore, without him. I feel like I’ve been sleepwalking through the past few months, wanting him back so badly, wishing I’d never let him go. So I decided that I didn’t need him, didn’t need anyone else to complete me, that I could be a whole person just on my own. I thought I’d succeeded until I met you. Because you were the same. You closed people out and you hid the real you way down deep where nobody could find him. And I saw that in you, and I pitied you for it, without realising that I was doing the exact same thing to myself.” She took a shaky breath, exhaled slowly as she struggled to find the right words. “You wanted to love me and I was too scared to let you, because I knew that if I let you in I wouldn’t be able to let you go. So I pushed you away before you could get too close, and I…”
Tears were gathering in the corners of her eyes, and as Marley blinked, one slid down her cheek. She swiped at it with the back of her hand, her eyes focussing on the tattoo on the side of Jake’s neck, feeling as though she was tangling herself in a web and couldn’t get loose. She couldn’t stop talking, trying to make him understand. Trying to make herself understand.
“I shouldn’t have told you to go. I never wanted you to leave, I just…I freaked out. I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t help it.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said quietly.
Marley looked him in the eyes. “I know you didn’t. And it’s not your fault.”
Jake stepped closer, and Marley could feel every inch of her skin start to tingle. The hairs on her arms were standing up as her body filled with electricity. Jake’s mismatched eyes were fixed on hers, holding her still while her insides whirled. She wanted to kiss him so badly, wanted to throw herself into his arms, but the ball was in his court. It was his move, not hers, so she waited.
Jake took a slow breath, then reached up and stroked her damp hair away from her face. “It’s not yours either,” he said.
